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1. There is no lower-bound on wealth at which people stop needing loans. Arbitrarily poor people can benefit (a lot) from loans. The main issue is that people
by jessriedel 7y ago
1. There is no lower-bound on wealth at which people stop needing loans. Arbitrarily poor people can benefit (a lot) from loans. The main issue is that people who are poor in rich countries are more likely to be people who make poor choices.
2. You did not address my point that if there is no way to stop people from getting illegal loans (loan sharks), it's better to give them loans at the market rate rather than the even higher rate loan sharks must charge because they operate outside the law. This consideration is very similar to legalizing drugs.
- JohnFen 7y ago> You did not address my point that if there is no way to stop people from getting illegal loans (loan sharks), it's better to give them loans at the market rate I don't think this is a good argument at all. In both instances, vulnerable people are being hurt. Arguing that it's OK for you to hurt them because you'll hurt them less than the other guy seems dubious to me.
- jessriedel 7y agoOK, but lots of people would disagree with you, e.g., in the context of supervised injection sites. Suppose it were unambiguously clear from data that (1) society as a whole and each individual were better off when marijuana was legal and tightly regulated; and (2) individuals would be better off not using marijuana. Would you then vilify marijuana providers? (I generally would not, although I would hold them to a stricter moral standard than I would for sellers of products that are generally beneficial to the user.) What if we replaced assumption (2) with assumption (2')?: 80% of individuals who use marijuana are better off (say, because they use it only socially and the negative motivational effects turn out to be small), and 20% are worse off (because they abuse it).